An exhibition from the archive
On 16 March 1968, soldiers of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, killed between 300 and 500 unarmed civilians, most of them women, children and old men, in the hamlets of My Lai and My Khe, in Son My village, Quang Ngai province. The army kept it quiet for more than a year. In November 1969 Seymour Hersh’s reporting and Ronald Haeberle’s photographs made it public.
On 29 March 1971 a court-martial convicted the platoon leader, Lieutenant William Calley, of murder and sentenced him to life. Within days President Nixon ordered him out of the stockade and into house arrest. Few events divided Americans so sharply, and the records show it: most US songs defended Calley, while most from abroad condemned the massacre.
Beyond the gallery
The archive holds close to three hundred songs and spoken-word recordings about My Lai and Lieutenant Calley, from the 1969 country singles through calypso, East German chanson and opera to the death-metal and black-metal bands of the last forty years.
Explore the full collection →